Hey, Dan here coming to you from Portugal and I have a holiday message for my fellow
ENFPs and INFPs and it's about anticipation and really one of the secrets to happiness in life.
In two days we have Christmas here and I know not everyone who follows this channel is someone
who follows Christmas. We have viewers in I think 190, 200 countries, probably everywhere.
It's actually pretty crazy to think about and not everyone does Christmas. And so
I wanted to explain what Christmas was like in my household. Sometime around late November,
I would decide the things I wanted, you know. One year it was a Sega Dreamcast. Ok, many years
was a Sega Dreamcast. Sega Dreamcast was like the thing in the day for me. And we would think
about that thing we really wanted and we'd think about it more and we'd research everything. And
I'd look up all the reviews and read everything you possibly could and get so excited for it,
and then you'd get that gift and you'd say thank you you'd really open it very quickly,
my mom would always be disappointed we didn't even take time to pose for photos, we would open
our gifts and run off and play them like crazy, usually just for a couple of days and...Yes,
at least in my house, the Christmas holiday was all about gifts turkey and mashed potatoes
and that was about it...There was no real deeper element to it and it is what it is,
it's a Canadian Christmas as long as we have a Christmas tree and we get stuff that's what
makes up a good Christmas. Now the lesson from this, because I'm one of those annoying people,
where I have to take a lesson from everything right. Everything leads to a thought or a lesson
or whatever else. I guess that's probably why I do what I do. Thing I realized is the anticipation
was often better than the gift itself. Thinking about getting let's say that Dreamcast and reading
all about it, and learning all about it, and checking the reviews, and all these things,
it's actually bringing probably more joy than actually sitting there and playing the game or
at least there was an equal part of the joy. And I was thinking about this. This year I'm at a weird
stage in life where there's nothing I really want to buy, okay there might be a certain sports car
from my youth that I always wanted that entered my radar recently, but in general, I like to be
not necessarily minimalist minimalist, but like I don't buy new things for the sake of new things
I've kind of run out of things and like I have a good camera, I hope this camera lasts me 20 years,
you know, my laptop same kind of thing. Things work, I see no reason to go and buy the newest
models or whatever else. So I was thinking about like Christmas and gifts and everything else, and
I realized that the anticipation used to be a huge part of that reward when you were younger right,
you'd think about something and you'd research it and in my case I had paper route since I was
10. So, you know, not thinking about Christmas but things I wanted to buy, I would have to spend so
much time working to get them that that brought a lot of joy and that's really how life works.
Fairly recently, I mean going back five or six months, I came across...actually no this was
a couple years back from an audiobook on your brain that I really enjoyed and it was reinforced
in the summer, I listened to an interview with a different neuroscientist and they
were talking about the chemicals in our brain particularly around dopamine and adrenaline,
and how it relates to goals. And when we're going after a goa,l so when we're in anticipation,
when we're in pursuit, when we're working towards something, is when we have the highest
levels of positive neurotransmitters in our brain, when we feel the best, when we have that extra
drive and focus and, I believe happiness as well, although I'd have to re-listen to that book to be
sure. And what is interesting is you get to the end of a goal right, in many cases, at least with
traditional goal setting and I will be filming a video for around New Year's on quote-unquote goals
and what I think is wrong with them and especially as ENFPs and INFPs what we should do around goals
and not do around goals to get better results and to feel better. So I'll get into that more then,
but in terms of right now what's interesting is when you achieve a goal your dopamine and
adrenaline levels actually go down, so you feel worse, and you lose your focus and if you fail to
achieve a goal they go down even more. Whatever happens when you get to that goal things are
worse than when you're in the pursuit of it. And so something to think about in life and I know a
lot of you already think this way, you realize that there is no end in life, there's not some
goal you will get to where suddenly you're there and everything is better, it's always a continuous
journey. I've made big strides in the last year or so and some pretty positive lifestyle upgrades
as well, and I will admit, it makes life better, there's certain goals you get to where life does
get better and things run smoother and maybe you don't have to worry about money or maybe
you're spending Christmas in Portugal with nice weather and in this wonderful house or things like
that. Like things do get better, but if you're someone who likes pursuing things, which you
probably are if you're following this channel, you're always going to want to keep pursuing
things. And so the thing that still brings me joy is pursuing new things, it's following my mission,
it's growing my team, it's what is my next project, what are the next things I'm doing. I
don't get to a point like, I maybe go in the pool like twice a week, you know, there's not a point
where you're like let's just sit around in life and do nothing. You always want to keep pursuing
and that's a good thing, that is going back to the way we're wired. And so the...I don't think
there's anything wrong with always wanting to grow and have more challenges and keep pursuing things,
where I think some people can go wrong and this probably isn't you, but maybe you're going to be
at a family dinner soon or a family Zoom call and there's people in your family who do this,
you could address it with them, is what is your end destination? Because this whole concept of,
you know, work, work, work, work and not be happy while you're doing that work to get to an outcome
doesn't really work out and the evidence whether it is larger surveys or studies or whether it's
just talking to people who you know who are retired and followed one path or the other,
you see that, that just working for the sake of working to hopefully get to some outcome one day
is not going to be fulfilling and it's not going to really benefit you in your life .But if you can
enjoy the process and figure out what you want to do in life, where you'll actually enjoy it
most of the days, maybe not every day, but most of the time you'll enjoy it, that's so
important because you're probably not going to want to retire at some one point or if you do
it's probably going to be a lot later in life than past generations. And no matter what happens like,
at least if you're wired at all like me you don't really just want to sit around all day and do
nothing. You want to be pursuing your mission so make sure you find that thing you want to
do where you're enjoying the process, because the process is where the enjoyment comes from,
the anticipation, you know, what you're working on and moving in that direction, the process
is what will take up the majority of your time and is really where the enjoyment comes from. This
concept of I'm doing this that I don't like to get to this end goal usually doesn't make sense,
I mean, there's some exceptions and maybe we get into that in a more complex video but,
just keep that in mind, think about that as you're going into the next year, how do you really
want to be spending your time what is really important to you in the moment, what processes,
what activities, what kind of people do you want to be spending time with in 2021, and think about
that. And one last note, kind of on the topic of processes, I know sometimes as an INFP or ENFP,
we do things last minute and we've been told that's wrong. You have to do things in advance
and blah, blah, blah...Well it's definitely the evening before I need to publish this video,
I will definitely be bugging my video editor and my team about getting this online tomorrow
morning, but you know what, it's getting done and as long as it gets done that works enough for
me. So embrace how you do things sometimes, don't worry about it as long as you get it done, you're
not the only one who does things last minute from time to time. Merry Christmas! Happy holidays!
Have an amazing New Year as well, and I will catch you in the next video soon. Bye for now.